![]() Half an hour across town, a new tiki bar called Lost River opened in June on Mack Avenue in east Detroit. Lost River Bartender Monica Casillas-rios crafts a signature drink. He keeps prices lower than most upscale craft cocktail bars, and swears Mutiny will never offer a single-serve $18 drink. “I wanted my first place to be a cross between a dive and something fancy,” he explains, adding that part of the goal with Mutiny Bar was to keep neighborhood patrons coming in. Vanderginst offers a Monkey Punch, a passion fruit-tinged elixir served over crushed ice and topped with a brandied cherry and a tiny edible fuchsia flower. I sit in what Vanderginst calls the “Lebowski lounge,” an orange and white plastic bowling alley banquette, complete with bottom-mounted cubbies for stowing bowling shoes. On a hot Wednesday afternoon, the place is quiet. “He came into the space for a drink, and the 80-year-old owners, a married couple, offered to sell him the place.” Kwiatkowski took them up on it, and within three months, Mutiny Bar opened. “Dave is always looking for new properties,” Vanderginst says. ![]() Kwiatkowski, a partner in The Peterboro, Wright & Company, and Honest John’s, also found Mutiny Bar’s building - half a storefront on Vernor Highway. His partner, Sugar House proprietor David Kwiatkowski, helped Vanderginst with backing and advice when Vanderginst decided to open Mutiny Bar after hosting a series of tiki popups at Sugar House in 2016. Tiki tends to breed more of itself, too - aping the culture of places like Don The Beachcomber or a really good Trader Vic’s, rather than anything real you’d see in Hawaii or Tahiti.Ī veteran of Detroit’s craft cocktail scene, Vanderginst, 38, began his career at the State Theatre, then the Magic Stick, and eventually worked his way up to becoming general manager at Sugar House. Instead, like its signature drinks, tiki chose a little bit of everything, threw it in a blender, and hoped for the best. ![]() At its origin, tiki didn’t represent any single culture. The bartenders were Filipino, the rum came from Cuba, and the mixers from Indonesia. While Detroit began its tiki adventure in the 1960s, the Cates’ book traces the origins of these escapist nightspots to 1933 when Ernest Gantt, a sailor and bootlegger who officially changed his name to Donn Beach in 1937, opened the eponymous Don the Beachcomber in Los Angeles. In its heyday, Chin Tiki saw the likes of Muhammad Ali and Barbra Streisand, bringing a kind of Hollywood-meets-islands glamour to central Detroit. The bar closed decades ago, and when the owner died in 2006, the building was sold and then torn down in 2009. Mauna Loa had an extensive menu including then very-exotic items like fried rice and a 60-cents-a-bowl “chilled clam nectar.” Chin Tiki, opened in 1967 by Ford engineer Marvin Chin, was known for its elaborate décor including large tiki statues, a bamboo footbridge, and an indoor waterfall. The walls at Mutiny Bar recall vacation, with various vintage Detroit tiki menus from long-closed spots like Mauna Loa and Chin Tiki. “We live in strange and unsettling political times.” People need a getaway, and more than Polynesian or Asian culture, tiki with its leis, ceramic mugs, coconuts, fruity drinks, and even the odd fake palm tree or two, celebrates the culture of “vacation.” “Don’t you want to escape the news?” Mutiny Bar manager and co-owner Chris Vanderginst asks. Today, while Detroit’s tiki proprietors usually mention cold weather as something people take cover from in their bars, they’re also quick to mention the stressful era we live in. “The tiki bar was where you could loosen the tie and let the rum wash the worries away,” Martin and Rebecca Cate write in Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki (Ten Speed Press, 2016), their definitive history of tiki. Submissions welcome! View the Wiki for more information on each of these links.In Detroit, particularly after WWII, tiki bars represented something hard to find, especially for the price of a rum punch: escape. ![]() Spam: the repeated self-promotion without interaction = Bad A basic difference of opinion is not a good reason for a downvote.Pull up a chair, sip your Mai Tai, and study the tsantsa-covered ceiling while listening to the sounds of the Hukilau. It all started in 1934 with the first Don the Beachcomber tiki restaurant, and was rejuvenated in the mid-90's with the printing of The Book of Tiki by Sven Kirsten. It's a longing for the time when Pacific islands were still exotic locales that inspired Donn Beach and Trader Vic to create their own versions back home. Tiki culture is a celebration of tropical escapism.
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